Yesterday she published a story that clearly expresses a truth that current events have forced many of us to reluctantly face. Reporting on reactions to the revelation from British intelligence sources that the intelligence and facts that led the U.S. and England to war with Iraq were fixed around a predetermined policy to go to war, she said:
I am not surprised at the duplicity. But I am astonished at the acceptance of this deception by voters in the United States and the United Kingdom.
I've seen two U.S. presidents go down the drain -- Lyndon B. Johnson on Vietnam and Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal -- because they were no longer believed. But times change -- and I guess our values do, too.
I am convinced that when this dark chapter in world history is finally written, this will be the lasting impression left by the recent evangelical experiment in "values voting." It's a legacy that will hang like an albatross around evangelical Christianity's neck.
4 comments:
American Evangelicalism's blind acceptance of anything that comes out of the mouth of the Bush administration (and the predilection of many politicians to shamelessly use evangelicals to promote their agendas) reminds me of the German Church's coalition with the third reich. I really wish that evangelicals would get literate for just long enough to revisit William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
I think it was George Santayana who said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Some Evangelicals like to think of Bonhoeffer as a shining example of Christian resistance. Do they not understand that they are now playing the part of the Reich Church in opposition to the Confessing Church?
Peace,
Mike
How can someone who is supposedly pro-life and can't vote for Kerry because he is pro-choice then turn around and vote for Bush who is responsible for getting us into a needless war that is killing thousands? The logic just boggles the mind.
Dr. Kear: The Christian Century makes a similar point about Germany in its latest editorial, which is currently the lead story at www.christiancentury.org.
The editorial also points out that if the Bush administration wants to nominate anti-abortion judges who are solid jurists he can.
Meg
Oops. Clicked through before leaving my whole blog address. I think I've got it right this time.
If you'll indulge me for a moment: I hope my blog will be a connecting point for mainstream Baptists and other evangelicals who--even if they voted for Bush in '04 because of abortion--are concerned about what's going on and feeling alone in their own congregations.
One plan is to start offering some "Vida gear" (vida being the Spanish word for life) that consistently pro-life people can wear or use in order to create opportunities for conversation in places where the silence about this political insanity has not yet been broken.
Though I'm new to this blogging thing and don't have a whole lot of time to put into it, I believe that together we can help evangelical dissenters from religious rightism to widen the space of dissent--even at the congregational level.
Meg
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